Crawl Out Through the Fallout
by PeppermintCat
Summary: "Evelyn Durand-Mathews was a prim, pretty woman of french-scandinavian descent with tired blue eyes, and a blonde stepford bob that was the envy of all her neighbors. For the past ten miserable years she had been marooned inside the perfect plastic nightmare of the American Housewife." Trigger warning: Brief description of attempted suicide. Rating for language and adult content.
1. Act 1: Out of Time

Evelyn Durand-Mathews was a prim, pretty woman of french-scandinavian descent with tired blue eyes, and a blonde stepford bob that was the envy of all her neighbors. For the past ten miserable years she had been marooned inside the perfect plastic nightmare of the American Housewife. Her star spangled veteran husband, Nate, was at one time a romantic with whom she'd thought she'd been in love. But like all the good things in her life, that too had crashed and burned in a spectacular way. After the war, he was left scarred with a violent mental disorder which caused his temper to ignite without warning. Instead of medicine they gave him medals.

She had stopped reminiscing about the man he was before the war years ago, having been disenchanted to having him back after only the fourth or fifth time he punched a hole through their bedroom door. Sure couples had their arguments but when you have men in your home more than once to deliver a new door, the situation ceased to be typical. His temper was set off by the simplest, most mundane things and while he never hit her, the concept wasn't so far fetched. When she wasn't walking on eggshells around her husband's erratic temper to maintain the appearance of a stable loving home to their family and friends, she was living an anxiety riddled home life where she alternated her days between crippling depression at the law firm and a blissful drug induced haze at home-compliments of the housewives collective that met at the salon every friday to forget their daily stress with spiked lemonade and gossip.

The two bedroom home Nate had purchased for them was her jail cell, and their colic riddled infant son Shaun was her shackle. On good days she felt a meager acceptance of his existence and her obligation to it. The worst days were far darker. She viewed the baby as a cruel reminder the failures that lay strewed across the burning landscape of her past.

Evelyn had, at one time, been an extremely talented singer. It was a gift she owed entirely to her great aunt, whose long life had been spent touring the world with an operatic troupe and then retiring into lavish luxury. When she was a girl, Evelyn had been enchanted by the older woman's dramatic tales of elegant concert halls brimming with adoring spectators and grand parties with such flourish and extravagance it was as if they had jumped right out of a fairytale.

While both of her parents, by their own underwhelming natures, managed to exclude their daughter from nearly every aspect of their crumbling marriage by simply ignoring her altogether, young Evelyn was fortunate enough to be dumped on her aunt when they needed the succor of seclusion and self destruction. In the privacy of her aunt's comfortable home, Evelyn would act out her fantasies with her aunt as a one person audience, and in front of the older woman's three section vanity, she would mimic the ease and grace she witnessed from the older woman.

When she was old enough, through the tutelage of her aunt, and the passive, uninvolved nature of her parents, Evelyn had started down a path to shape herself into a future star. With practice and natural talent alike, she had easily surpassed every childhood level of stardom. From church, to school, commercials and even the local radio stations, Boston slowly began to recognize her name. Offers began to pour in from every direction for a chance to feature her lovely voice, but it all paled in comparison to the chance to follow her Aunt's footsteps into the Opera.

Unfortunately, before she could make her debut on the theatrical stage, the sudden death of her aunt crippled her psyche enough to permanently throw a wrench into her ambitions. The old woman had died from natural causes, allowing for no blame to be placed on an outside source. When she couldn't lash out, the blame became internalized and began to fester like a sour wound. Crushed, and absent of anyone who would help to ease her hurt, Evelyn gradually retreated into numb indifference.

Grown, and in need of some sort of stability, Evelyn threw herself into menial work at her father's law firm, a fall back which came with about as much pomp and circumstance as you might expect from a man whose life ambition was to prove his superiority to others. He would often and demeaningly remind her of his "charity" to her. At work she suffered under the usual embarrassing harassment from the nearly all male staff; rowdy men who never seemed to grow passed adolescence. While none were audacious enough to physically touch her with the looming shadow of her volatile husband at the edge of every rumor, they weren't timid about making implications. Her father, naturally, wouldn't entertain her complaints just as he hadn't entertained her talent, and her mother, a stale twiggy clone of Evelyn's beloved great aunt, was old fashioned enough to be little more than a backdrop in her daughter's tragic life.

The one bright spot, if such a thing could even be said about it, had been meeting Nate. She had been in such a grayscale routine that his bright eyes and well-rounded attitude had stirred within her a semblance of the passion that she had once known. It wasn't for her dream, but through the relationship she would prove she wasn't a failure, that she still mattered. They went through all the steps perfectly as if they'd rehearsed it for the stage. Meeting, courtship, engagement, marriage, the house, the baby. They were the envy of the entire town.

But then the war happened.

...and there she was, with a squalling insatiable infant, the climax of the second rate dream she was struggling to achieve inside a house that looked like all the other houses on her block. Cubed hedges, robot nannies, barbecues, and dinner parties. All pearly smiles and vacant eyes. It was as far away from the rich, and raw emotion of the opera as she could think of.

Now whenever she looked in the vanity, the one heirloom she had managed to save from the estate sale, she saw her mother in her own darkened and detached eyes.

When the bombs fell, for the first time in years she felt a genuine emotion; fear. She had been utterly terrified, and it had been completely selfish. She had sprinted to the vault with her family, clung to them in sheer horror while the elevator descended just as the blinding flash of the first bomb out shown the sun. Instead of relief, an ice cold dread twisted around her heart when she opened her eyes to the harsh sterile light of the underground bunker. Not because the world as she had known it might have just come to a sudden violent end, but because she now had to be stuck down there beneath the burning chaos, encaged by steel and circuitry with the products of her failures.

The claustrophobia did not truly set in until she stepped into her decontamination tank. Nate had stopped her and kissed her briskly before stepping into his own, Shaun grasped firmly in his muscular arms. Her lips were stiff and unresponsive to his; even in what would be their final moments she couldn't muster any feeling toward him but resentment.

Guilt had almost surfaced apart from the fear as the glass encasement of the machine closed and the inner atmosphere began to change. Guilt for selfishly embracing the blissful black void as the temperature suddenly plummeted and everything went dark.

* * *

Evelyn fell unceremoniously from her decontamination pod, landing in a graceless heap on the chilled metal floor. Her entire body convulsed as she coughed and retched. It felt as though someone had shoved a fistful of snow down her throat. Her lungs were on fire as she struggled to breathe around the melting ice crystals. Violent quaking shivers tremored through her as frost melted and dampened her vault suit.

Her first waking thought was complete and utter panic. Still reeling from the dread incited by the prospect of being trapped in this claustrophobic metal hole, Evelyn stayed tightly balled up in the fetal position until she realized that the area around her, which had been previously bustling with lab coats and official uniforms, was now eerily still and silent.

Slowly, as her breathing became more regular, Evelyn managed to push herself up from the floor, knees wobbling as the burning coughs still wracked her unstable frame. Her muscles were stiff, permeated by an icy chill that bristled in splintering pain with every movement, as she tried to connect her racing thoughts to her unresponsive body. It had been only moments since she was jerked back to reality...hadn't it?

As her rapidly blinking eyes darted around the immediate area, she became less and less sure. That's when she finally took notice; directly in front of her, still encased behind frosted glass, was Nate. Without much else to go on, and no one else in sight, Evelyn lurched forward on quivering legs and all but fell on top of the large red depressurization button next to his pod. With a whirring hiss, the glass door ascended, revealing the stiff and frozen form of her husband to her wide, disbelieving eyes.

She covered her mouth in a silent scream as she observed the icy crimson hole in his forehead, and the resulting gory frozen splatter of grey matter behind his lifeless downturned head.

Nate was dead.

Shaun was gone.

Images flashed with blaring succession in front of her horror stricken eyes. A man with a gun. Her crying baby. A gunshot. A smug, scarred face.

Evelyn slammed her fist onto the red button again as her vision began to blur, tearing her eyes away from her husband's corpse with an anguished cry. The tears were searing against her chilled cheeks as she sunk to her knees against the button's interface, heavy sobs quaking her body. Between sobs and gulps of air, she calls out in desperate, strangled shouts for help, only to be met with her own voice echoing back in the unsettling stillness.

Those things she saw...were they correct? Did she truly witness Nate's murder? Her son's kidnapping? The memory of the muffled gunshot made her shudder. It seemed real enough but then where was everyone? Surely security would have stopped the such a dangerous man and rescued her son. There were only so many places in a vault that someone could hide.

It was a long while before she mustered the strength to stand again, this time a bit more stable as blood began to re-circulate into her aching limbs. Her senses felt electrified, her heart pounded deafeningly in her ears, and in a red eyed, trembling stupor, she dared to venture forward.

Refusing to look back at what she still couldn't quite believe, Evelyn sniffed and sputtered as she moved away from the pods to further search around the vault. With hazy vision she scanned her immediate surroundings, looking for any sort of clue; some morsel of evidence that could explain how or why this had happened, but there was only silence and emptiness.

With each successive empty room she explored, the more convinced she became that she was alone inside the vault. That being said, she reluctantly picked up a military grade pistol when she happened across one. Her hand had trembled as she palmed its full weight. Her throat tightened, and her eyes blurred as terror filled her heart once again. Would she be able to pull the trigger if Nate's killer still lurked nearby? Or...more likely...would she meet the same grisly fate? A glance at the now barren room around her proved that she could not very well stay in place. If she was going to live, she had no choice but to keep going.

On shaky legs, she searched on.

When she approached the first skeleton it was with slow, hesitant steps with her shaky pistol sited directly at it. She could barely believe what she was seeing, going so far as to jostle a bony hand with the muzzle of the pistol. The disturbed remains let out a muffled clatter as their delicate position shifted and whatever connective tissue still holding it together disintegrated and left the bones in a vaguely human shaped heap at her feet. Evelyn scrutinized the scene with wide watery eyes, unnerved in a way she couldn't aptly describe. This skeleton looked as if it had been there a century or more, but certainly that was absurd. It had been minutes at the most since she had last seen her husband-

The image of his frozen corpse blared instantly into her mind like an air horn, and she jerked back from the skeleton with enough force to send herself tumbling backward onto the floor. The pistol clattered noisily to the floor along with her, and in the panic induced by the memory, she scrambled after it, clasping the weapon like a vice in both hands. She pressed her forehead into the rear sight with a bruising force, and squeezed the grip until her fingers went white and numb. This place made no sense to her. What had happened here?! The vault was supposed to be a place to save people, but all she seemed to find there was death!

Death.

In a burst of action, Evelyn threw herself back onto her haunches, sniveling and sobbing as she thrust the muzzle of the pistol under her chin. Her finger trembled at the trigger, as she squeezed her eyes painfully shut, blacking out the nightmare she had woken to, more vile and terrible than the one she had left. It had come to this, after years of toying with the idea, and being dragged back from the edge by the guilty obligation to her family, she now had the opportunity to duck out, press restart...all she had to do was pull…

A sudden skittering hissing sound from her left jerked her head and her full attention away just as her finger twitched at the trigger, firing the bullet towards the ceiling. The sound was deafening, stunning her long enough for the creature to jump at her, snapping its repulsive oversized mandibles at her arm where it easily scissored through fabric and flesh. With a shriek, she tumbled back, kicking at the giant insect with all her might. It screeched as her boot made impact, and scurried out of her reach.

Evelyn scrambled backward as the creature made an abrupt about face and a beeline back at her. Yet, before it had a chance to jump again, the traumatized woman let loose a harrowing and wild screech, unloading the unused rounds in her pistol at the beast until only the weak clicking of an empty chamber remained.

As the dust settled, and the high pitch wailing in her ears died to a dull ring, Evelyn discovered the bug was more than dead. It's gigantic body had been absolutely pulverized under her attack. With her heart still racing, and her mind still whirling from the encounter with the almost comically large insect and the narrowly averted suicide attempt just moments before its appearence, Evelyn's entire body began to shake anew as the first few sputtering shaky chuckles escaped her. An instant later, she sat backed up against the wall with her head in her hands, gasping to breathe as she cackled uncontrollably. She felt like a mad woman as she rocked there with tears streaming down her cheeks and hysterical laughter tumbling from her lips , but for the moment it was a worthwhile way to expel the conflicting emotions she was experiencing

" _The fucking luck I have,"_ she thought bitterly, " _I can't even kill myself properly."_

It was a long emotional while before she was calm enough to move. Her wounded arm throbbed and oozed fresh blood as she scrubbed her cheeks clean of whatever remaining dampness was left from her tears, and stuffing her empty pistol into her vault suit close to her heart, she yanked an arms length of loose pipe from a the ruined plumbing of a nearby wall and continued on.

Stepping carefully, Evelyn cautiously navigated her way through the maze like corridors of the vault. Hall after hall, room after room, there was no one. A few times she was surprised by more of those giant crawling insects, but disposed of them easily enough with a few adrenaline spiked whacks of her pipe. If she was honest, the gory brutality of their splattering bodies soothed the hysterical panic still bubbling under the delicate lid of her composure.

She searched what felt like the entirety of the damned bunker before she finally came across something she recognized; the large elevator that had brought her down into this hole. After deeming the surroundings free of bugs, she all but sprinted toward the controls, but barely caught herself against a side desk as her foot caught against something laying in her path. Upon further inspection as she leaned down to grab it, she realized it was a slightly worn, but still wearable Pip Boy.

Turning it over in her hands, Evelyn examined it further. The screen was scuffed, with a hairline crack running down the right side, but the inner cuff still retained its its comfortable cushion. She had seen these things before, but never used one, so as she slid the tech easily over her hand, and flipped its power switch, she was understandably startled when the inner lining suddenly constricted around her forearm. With a fearful and frustrated growl, she clawed at the contraption with her free hand in attempt to remove it, but it was fit so securely in place that it wouldn't budge. Resigned to wait and see what would happen, Evelyn eyed the small screen warily as she waited for it to boot up.

After a flashing countdown loading screen, the classic black and green of the tiny terminal's main screen blinked to life. In all honesty she was surprised to see it still in working order given the ruin of the area in which she'd found it, but as she fiddled with the various buttons and knobs, flitting from screen to screen, she decided that it had been worth the unease.

Flicking the pip boy off for the moment, Evelyn refocused her attention to her current goal; getting the hell out of this pit before she completely lost her mind. She scrambled up the small set of metal stairs onto the catwalk she had previously crossed to get there. To her left, the elevator controls were daunting in their complexity, but a small port on the panel, nearly lost to her in the sea of buttons and levers, caught her attention.

She reexamined her pip boy, fumbling near the top for the reason the port had seemed so familiar. With clumsy fingers still trembling from the residual chill and fear she still carried, Evelyn grasped her prize; a matching plug. Extending its cord out, she plugged it into the corresponding port and waited.

Nothing happened.

With an impatient hiss, she hastily unplugged the wire and plugged it back in again.

Still nothing.

Growing more desperate, Evelyn gave the panel a swift kick with her booted foot, growling in frustration as it merely trumpeted a series of sizzling, and muted beeps.

"Come on damn it! Work!" She shouted at the offending piece of machinery, unplugging the cord once again, before jamming it violently back into port. Whether through the force with which she had lodged it in, or the desperation she willed at the circuitry to work, the interface of the panel suddenly lit up like a christmas tree, and the largest button-a bright yellow light in the center-was the bright beacon star.

More than ready to leave the vault and its gruesome incidents behind her, Evelyn slapped the button. At once, a dull warning alarm began to sound as the security door swung open with a hiss, and the evacuation lights along the catwalk floor illuminated the path to the elevator. Without wasting another moment, Evelyn sprinted onto the massive platform and eagerly turned her head skyward to catch her first sight of the world after the bombs.


	2. Act 2: Welcome Home

* = Peggy Lee is the sultry voice behind the song "Black Coffee".

* * *

Sanctuary Hills was nearly unrecognizable.

From where Evelyn stood at the curbside just inside the little suburb, all that seemed to remain were the skeletal beams and walls of a few homes. Though they were stripped of most of their siding, and roofs, as she stepped into the road she could still recognize each one. Mr. Donoghue there, the Sumners, the Parkers, Miss Betty Ruth's…

As she passed each one, another piece of her composure fell away until she finally stood before her own ruined home in stunned despair. The door was missing, and from what little she saw beyond suggested the interior didn't look much better. She blinked back tears as she stepped up the entrance steps and over the threshold.

Nothing had evaded the destructive power of the bombs. The last memory of her lovely home seemed to superimpose over what she was currently seeing in a surreal and slightly vertigo inducing manner; she swore she could still see the coffee cup on the counter steaming, and the fuzzy static warning station glowing on the television. She shuffled backward into the wall just beside the door, both hands coming up to cup her mouth muffling a croaking sob as she slid down the wall until she sat in a quivering heap on the floor. It was all ruined, everything she had scraped and scrounged together to make just so…

"You there, ruffian! Vacate these premises or I shall be forced to take action!"

She recognized the polished accent in an instant. Scrambling quickly back to her feet, Evelyn peeked around the door frame, eyes scanning around until she spotted him.

Codsworth.

Without really thinking, Evelyn sprinted toward the hovering Mr. Handy, tossing herself at him in a frantic embrace, relieved that she had finally found something that hadn't been left in ruin.

"Codsworth!" she cried as her arms circled securely around his bulbous head piece just under his mobile optical arms. He appeared stunned, if a robot could be such a thing.

"M-Mrs. Mathews?!" Codsworth stuttered in surprise. "C-could it truly be?"

Evelyn backed away from her robotic butler, taking in the full sight of him with teary eyes as he seemed to do the same, the shutters in his optical spheres focusing and refocusing as if he couldn't believe his sensors . For all the sorrow she felt, she couldn't help but smile as the Mr. Handy began to bob excitedly in mid air, his mechanical limbs waving and flailing around her.

"As I live an breathe!" He all but cried out in a trembling timbre. "It really IS you!"

Evelyn suspected if the mechanical butler could embrace her and cry on her shoulder, he would have. "Codsworth, I can't describe what a relief it is to see you!" she told him earnestly, her own voice quivering as she sniffs back more tears.

"Oh mum I feel quite the same way! Things have been so dreadfully dull around here in your absence!" he replied sounding absolutely delighted. "But thats not a concern any longer now that you and sir have finally come home!"

With a twist and turn of his optical orbs, Codsworth eagerly searched the immediate area around her. "Where is sir by the way? Has he already taken young Shaun inside?"

Evelyn's throat tightened. The images of the horrors within the vault were still fresh and raw in her mind. She turned away from the robot in a futile attempt to maintain her composure in front of him.

"He's...he's dead Codsworth." she croaked.

"Mrs. Mathews…" Codsworth murmured, hovering a bit nearer to her. "What you're saying...it just doesn't make any sense at all. Perhaps we should go inside? I believe a distraction from this dire mood might-"

"They killed him Codsworth!" She blurts at him, crossing her arms and hugging herself for comfort. "They killed him, and they took Shaun!"

Silence fell between them and for a long moment the only sound was the firing of the boosters which kept Codsworth afloat.

"It's worse than I suspected." He finally interjected, moving in a graceful maneuver around her so they were once again face to face. He appears to examine her closely before continuing. "Hmm, yes. Just as I thought. You seem to be suffering from hunger induced paranoia. Two hundred years without a proper home cooked meal will do that to you."

Evelyn felt as though she'd been turned to stone as she watched Codsworth drift away from her into the house. Had she heard him correctly? She took a few shaky steps up the stoop before doubling over against the doorframe, and dry heaving to the side of the steps. Little more than bile and saliva came up, but she continued to dry heave until the concerned robot flitted back to her side.

"Mum! It's just as I said! Please come sit down and rest while I whip something together-"

"Codsworth!" Evelyn gasped with ragged breath as she wiped her lips and on the sleeve of her vault suit. "Did-did you say two hundred years just now?"

"Actually, it's a bit over 210 mum, give or take for the earth's rotation and a few dings to the old chonometer." The robot had the audacity to chuckle awkwardly as she gaped at him with an unbelieving stare.

As he prattled on about scrounging around something for her that wasn't too moldy, the world seemed to go fuzzy around the edges as a sound like static in her ears rose in volume until it completely drowned out the robot's rambling.

Two hundred years.

It wasn't possible-how could it be? Those tanks...they had been to sterilize them as they came in from the outside to prevent contamination. Even if they had only been exposed to the initial blast the few moments it had taken for the elevator to descend, it was only to protect them in the long run...right? Yet, as her mind raced around her first memories of waking up, she recalled the frost and the cold and Nate's frozen corpse. Then suddenly she recalled a commercial from before the war. In the catchy jingle of the advertisement, men in white lab coats had chimed about the benefits of cryogenic research. _Preservation Through Refrigeration_. Even though she didn't wish to entertain the thought, the elapsed time explained everything she found inside the vault; the emptiness, the decay...the skeletons.

She began to hyperventilate.

For years Evelyn had wished and prayed and hoped to escape the life she had settled for, but this was too much. Everyone she had ever known, and even their possible descendants, were long dead.

Evelyn crumpled then, dropping to her knees on the stoop in front of her mechanical butler before doubling over, her palms pressing into the remnants of the door mat. The fabric darkened in growing spots as the torrential tears slipped off her nose and chin.

Just inside the threshold, Codsworth swayed anxiously before his mistress, seemingly at a loss for what to do in her fragile state. Had it been something he said?

* * *

By the time darkness had fallen, Evelyn had relocated to her son's nursery. It was the only room that was still mostly furnished, and intact. Codsworth had brought her a lantern and a rusty tray piled with a dirty glass of purified water from his condenser and a piece of mutated fruit, both of which remained untouched where he had gingerly sat them down on the floor nearby. She had fallen into a catatonic state when she could no longer cry, and after remaining unresponsive to his nervous small talk, the Mr. Handy had drifted away to once again attend to his chores.

Evelyn sat motionless in her nursing chair in the corner. The upholstery was worn and ripped in places but still comfortable though it didn't really register outside of the dull ache pulsing through her entire body. She was exhausted but she couldn't bring herself to sleep, not after everything that had happened. In her hands she held a tattered stuffed bear, yet another ruined memento of her life before. It sported a blue and white striped tie, in its paws a heart of the same pattern with stuffing sticking out from a burst seem; embroidered there were the words 'It's A Boy.'

A small clatter roused her from her sedated state, her heart beating a bit faster as she slowly stood up, abandoning the bear in the chair to palm the metal pipe she had balanced up against the wall nearby. Slowly, she made her way down the darkened hallway, pipe raised in the event that whatever had made the noise was hostile, but as the hall gave way to the former sitting area, she found that it was only Codsworth hovering near an old shelf case. He didn't appear to have noticed her, so as she lowered her weapon, relieved she didn't have to use it, she quietly observed him.

From the mess on the floor she gathered he had been trying to dust the shelves, and knocked whatever bric-a-brac still there onto the floor, which he now seemed to be scrambling to pick up. However, his movements lacked their usual grace as his single clamp hand attempted and failed multiple times to gather the fallen items.

"Codsworth," She chimes quietly so as not to startle him, but the robot whirls around in a flourish regardless, further scattering the items along the floor with the force of his boosters. "Are you alright? You seem...uneasy."

For a moment she didn't think he would answer, but then all at once he seemed to breakdown. "Oh Mrs. Mathews!" he wailed, all three of his arms drooping down toward the ground in a dejected sort of way. "It-it's been simply awful without you here! Sir was never much fond of me, but without _you_ to talk to, without _you_ to serve...I…..I-"

In another flourish, he rockets toward the kitchen, using a single mechanical arm to wave frantically at the floor. "I spent the first ten years trying to keep the floors waxed, but nothing can get nuclear fallout out of vinyl wood! Nothing!" He all but sobbed, "And don't get me _started_ on the futility of trying to dust a collapsed house!"

Evelyn's eyes once again fell on the scattered items from the shelf. As he went on to hysterically describe trying to polish rust off the car, she stepped into the living area and gingerly collected every piece, and replaced them on the shelf. A baseball glove, a broken picture frame with no surviving photo, a coffee cup, and….a baby bottle.

"I'm so sorry we left without saying goodbye, Codsworth." She piped up with a wavering voice, barely audible even to her own ears, but the robot's sensitive audio sensors picked it up with ease.

"Oh mum." He sighed, at once at her side. "You needn't apologize. Had you and sir not made haste at once to the vault with young Shaun, the three of you would surely have been killed in the blast!."

"A great help it turned out to be." she scoffs.

"Surely you don't mean that Mum! After all, you found your way back here even after…"

She meets his optical orb with her eyes as his words fade out. With a sigh, she lifts a hand to pat the top of his head sphere. "I suppose you're right Codsworth." She concedes, even as she bitterly clings to her own death wish. "Thank you."

For a moment, silence falls between them as her hand falls back to her side. Just as she is about to turn back toward the hall, the Mr. Handy speaks up once again.

"Mrs. Mathews I-."

"Please, Codsworth, just call me Evelyn." She tiredly interjects.

"Evelyn…" He tests her name, clearly unimpressed with the lack of formality, but continues on regardless. "I did manage to save something for you. I know you and sir did not get along in the best way, but I believe he meant this to be a surprise for you."

From his storage compartment, Codsworth procured a single standard holotape, extending it to her in the delicate grasp of his clamp appendage. Evelyn eyed it warily, but took it from him with a small smile and a thank you.

With a sigh she ran a hand over her forehead in thought, contemplating attempting to sleep, only to hiss suddenly in pain as her fingers passed over a hidden wound at her temple. At her obvious discomfort, Codsworth is at once alert, a small inspection light at the end of one of of his mechanical limbs lifting to shine over the afflicted area.

"Oh my!" he exclaimed, "Mrs. Mathews, you're injured! Was this an error at the salon?"

"Ow!" she yelped as he prodded the area. She batted his appendage away. "The salon-? No! I just...I fell inside the vault." The insistent tone in her voice left no room for questions, as she quickly side stepped him and trotted down the hall.

In the bathroom where a broken mirror still hung on the ruined tile wall, Evelyn took a closer look at herself. With a gasp she gapes in disbelief at her reflection in the fractured glass. Gently pushing aside crispy singed hair, she is shocked to find that from cheekbone to hairline along her temple was an angry red splotch of raw, pink flesh; the only evidence of her attempted suicide. She bulked at the sight of it.

How had she not noticed before? Had she really been so out of it to not even check her appearance? Feather lightly, she prodded the edges of the burn. It was still tender, but looked to be on it's way to recovery on its own. Her hair however, was an entirely different matter. The the staple of her perfect blonde bob was now an uneven nest of burnt hair and knots. With a grimace Evelyn attempted to finger comb through the mess, but the most she could do was ease the frizzy tangles, not work through them, and with the cut still uneven, it just looked ridiculous; she would have to find something to hid it.

With her arms held up adjusting and readjusting her ruined hair, her upper arm began to throb. When it reached the point of actual pain, Evelyn lowered her arm to examine it. What now? She blinked in surprise at the torn fabric darkened to a crusty brown. The smell was atrocious, and as she attempted to pick the fabric aside an electric shock of pain shot down her spine. Jerking her hand away, her breath came a bit quicker as her vision began to dizzily swim.

From the hall, Codsworth spoke up "Your arm looks a mess mum, perhaps I might take a look?"

Yes! Thank goodness Nate hadn't skipped out on purchasing the newest Mr. Handy model with the bonus basic first aid program feature. "Yes, Codsworth please! Just-just be careful."

"Naturally, but Mrs. Mathews-"

"Evelyn." She corrected.

"Evelyn." He said curtly, clearly still uncomfortable with her first name. "You must remain perfectly still for my sensors to be as accurate as possible. I don't wish to cause further harm."

With a nervous gulp, Evelyn nodded once quickly, and a moment later the robot was at her side. He used his circular saw appendage at a low speed setting in precision movement to cut away the sleeve of her vault suit, before using the tiny spot light on another to illuminate the afflicted area. While most of the sleeve had come away easily enough, a small square which he had cut around, remain stuck to the wound having dried there once the initial bleeding had ceased.

"Removing this is going to be tricky." The robot told her honestly. "The fabric is dried to the open face of the wound. It...it's going to hurt."

With another gulp, Evelyn scrutinized the area before letting out a long, trembling breath. "It's alright." She told him, though the waver in her voice didn't really promote confidence. "Just-just do it quickly, like a band-aid."

"Right." His clamp appendage grasped a tattered corner gingerly. "Ready?"

Evelyn squeezed her eyes shut. The second she gave him the go ahead, the fabric was ripped away, and the white hot pain of reopening the gash sent stars into her vision as it took her breath away. Her entire arm was stiff as her muscles spasmed around the pain. She doubled over, as her eyes leaked tormented tears.

"Dreadfully sorry about that." The robot apologized as he waited patiently for his mistress to regain her composure and right herself once again.

With shaky, slow breaths and sniffing back more tears, Evelyn straightened up, willing herself to ignore the throbbing wound as it pulsed with renewed vigor. "Go on." She croaked, averting her eyes when she noticed the fresh blood and pus alike as they oozed down her arm, gulping back the instinct to gag.

Without another word, the robot set to work. From his storage compartment he procured antiseptic, dabbing it across the angry open surface, both cleaning and dissolving away any remaining fibers from the vault suit sleeve. The burn of the action made Evelyn sway uneasily on her feet.

Afterward, he brandished a stimpack removed from the same compartment, it's short hypodermic needle a dangerously sharp point. She kept her line of vision directed away as he eased it into the skin near the gash, at once feeling the slow, warming pressure of the medication seeping into her bloodstream.

When the procedure was finally complete, Codsworth hovered back to examine his handy work as Evelyn dared to glance down. While the gash was still swollen and red, it looked healthier than before which she supposed was a good thing.

"Unfortunately, I don't have the means to dress it." He told her, clearly upset by the admission.

Evelyn glanced around the bathroom until her eye fell on the discarded sleeve of her vaut suit hanging limply off the side of the sink where she had hurriedly draped it. "What about that?" she asked.

Codsworth took up the fabric, examining the cleaner bits of it before using his saw to slice it into strips. "If we coat the under layer in antiseptic to keep it clean, and use the top layer to hold it in place, I believe it should work out alright. I'll need you to do the tying I'm afraid."

Evelyn nodded as he set to work soaking the first strip in the first aid solution before draping it gingerly over her arm where she just as carefully tied it in place. The next strips were dry, and a bit more difficult to keep in place, but eventually the young woman stood before the mirror again with a cleanly bandaged arm.

"Good show!" Codsworth cheered.

Feeling a bit woozy as the adrenaline in her veins slowly dissipated, Evelyn couldn't help but laugh as the robot appeared to be just as giddy as she felt. Evelyn thanked him with a sleepy smile, thankful that he didn't ask more questions about her arm, or the burn on her face for that matter. With the promise of investigating the remnants of the neighborhood with him tomorrow and a brief goodnight spoken through a yawn, Evelyn excused herself for the night, retreating back into the nursery.

For a long time she considered the holotape Codsworth had presented to her, turning it over and over in her hands as she wondered what on earth Nate might have recorded on it. Part of her was curious enough to pop it into her pip boy right then, another, larger part still reeled from seeing him dead and didn't want more reminders….a tiny sliver ached to hear his voice…

However, as her eyelids grew heavier and the soft dingy golden flicker of the lantern flame lulled her into a space comfortable enough for sleep, she decided that the tape could wait. She placed it gingerly on the ruined changing table beside her, before curling up in the chair and finally drifting to sleep.

That night she relived the horrors she had witnessed in the vault several different ways in her dreams. One began with her being able to open her cryo tank while the villains were still present, only to end in her own death next to her husband. During another, she remained trapped inside her pod long after Nate was dead, able to move, but unable to get out. Yet another left her frozen and lost inside her own mind.

* * *

By the time the first light of morning had broken through the ruined roof, Evelyn had already been awake for a few hours, having not been able to find sleep again once she woken from the last nightmare. She had remained in place still exhausted but also still in enough denial to keep her eyes closed to the destruction around her. When she finally did uncurled herself from the nursing chair, it was with great reluctance. Her limbs were sore and heavy from the poor night's sleep in the less than ideal sleeping arrangements.

Her stirring seemed to have caught Codsworth's attention because only moments after she fully stood and stretched out her aching back, he was in the doorway trumpeting a friendly "Good Morning Mum!"

Evelyn replied in kind, even managing to smile somewhat genuinely even though she felt the exact opposite. It was good to see him back to normal, the minor diversion from his usual cheerful self the previous night had shaken her. The return to normalcy was soothing. After a brief exchange, in which the robot demanded she eat _something_ , Evelyn conceded to him only after her stomach churned painfully at the mention of food. Aside from the mutated fruit he had brought her last night, she wolfed down two more, a can of pork and beans heated by the flame on one of his mechanical arms and an entire cylinder of purified water.

A little while after breakfast, and after an exchange in pleasantries with Codsworth, the two of them ventured out into the neighborhood together. She allowed the Mr. Handy to lead given that she wielded only a metal pipe for protection. It was a job he took with pride it seemed considering that the few bugs they did run into were dispatched with fiery ease.

It was just as surreal searching through the other houses as it had been searching through her own. There were things still in place, things she recognized, along with all the memories associated with them. In the back of the Parkers' house she found a rusted out grilled along with several outdoor lounge chairs; she had spent many the summer night there socializing and drunk on cocktails.

Inside Mr. Donoghue's home, where barely anything still stood she found his dusty patched fedora stashed inside a dresser drawer; she carefully swiped it up, and placed it on her own head as she continued to the next house.

She hadn't known the Sumners very well. They had kept mostly to themselves since they had moved in, which itself was only weeks before the bombs fell. The result was that she didn't recognize anything in their home other than a small desk picture frame which still retained a sun bleached portrait of the family under dirty, cracked glass; she took it as well.

Betty Ruth's little cottage was the most difficult to rifle through if only because the cynical young widow had been her closest friend. Of course, neither of them had ever said as much out loud; they hadn't been school girls after all. Both women had been bitter and indifferent to the world around them. Ruth because she'd lost her husband in the war, and Evelyn because hers had come home. They had shared many a bottle of wine over such dark ironies.

There had been a time during a particularly dark stretch of Evelyn's marriage in which Ruth had been the only comfort to her. The intensity of their bond had remained unnamed for the sake of propriety, but neither woman had ever backed down from the unspoken truth behind the tension they felt alone with wine and music.

Ruth's favorite song had been a jazzy blues piece called Black Coffee*. It featured a sultry, velvet female voice which suited her tastes, and had such a derisive melancholic tone you could perfectly envision the dark, smoky bar room in which she had claimed to first hear it whenever she put the tape in.

As chance would have it, while searching through the wreckage of a wardrobe, Evelyn happened across a nearly worn out holotape with those very words etched across it in an elegant black script that she recognized at once as Ruth's. Of all the treasures she had found in the remnants of the tiny community, it would be the most cherished. She slid the holotape reverently into the breast pocket of her vault suit before she gathered up her other collected mementos, and made her way back to Codsworth where he hovered just outside the entryway.

It was midday when the pair made their way back home, wherein Evelyn promptly delivered her collected treasure to the nursery. The safest place for them was in the crib itself, though it took her longer than it should have to place them there. She examined each item closely and with great care, taking the time to turn each one over in her hands, memorizing them. These things were all she had left of these people; neighbors which only now did she realize were her only friends. Without them, she was alone.

"Mum? Are you quite alright?"

Almost alone.

Evelyn scrubbed at her eyes quickly, swiping away any moisture that might have collected there before she spun around to acknowledge the robot. "Yes, thank you Codsworth. I'm fine."

There was a pregnant pause in which Evelyn felt distinctly that he didn't believe her, but then he continued without further comment.

"I was pondering, and pardon me if I am over extending" the robot spoke thoughtfully "about the scoundrel who abducted young Shaun and, well…"

Evelyn's heart began to pound. Had the man with the scar gone through sanctuary? The thought alone terrified her. What if he came back for her? He had, after all, called her the 'backup'.

"If you intended to search for him, it might be advantageous to start in Concord. The residents there only shot at me minimally the last time I ventured into town."

Residents? "Codsworth, do you mean to tell me there are still people alive out here?" She asks in disbelief.

"Well of course!" he replied jovially, happy to have informed her. "I believe there are a few settlements scattered here and there. Concord has been the extent of my travels, though I haven't procured any useable products from there for decades, though I am sure you would have a better eye for such things than I. Oh! Perhaps we could make a trip of it like we used to! A jolly family excursion to the city? If only sir and young Shaun were here they would so love it!"

A twinge of nostalgia pulsed through her heart at the idea. As she considered his words, she scanned the room around her, until her eyes fell on the empty can from her breakfast earlier. She hadn't seen any food in the other houses, and she didn't recall seeing any in her home either. Whatever there might have been was probably inedible at this point regardless so searching more out seemed like the logical thing to do...and if there were people there still alive then perhaps they could help her.


End file.
